• T-Mobile US unveils AI-enabled Live Translation
• Kyivstar acquires online healthcare platform 
• Odido’s owners have paused the latest IPO plan

In today’s industry news roundup: T-Mobile US uses its Capital Markets Day to announce the launch of an in-network live translation service as well as to report its latest financials; Veon’s Kyivstar adds to its digital services portfolio; the private equity owners of Dutch operator Odido put their latest IPO plans on hold; and much more!

T-Mobile US has unveiled what it claims is “the world’s first real-time agentic AI platform built directly into a wireless network” with the launch of Live Translation, a “first-of-its-kind network-integrated service that enables real-time translation during phone calls in over 50 languages”, no matter what smartphone is being used. “Some of the biggest barriers wireless customers face are the simplest ones – like being able to understand each other,” stated Srini Gopalan, CEO of T-Mobile, in this announcement. “When language gets in the way, the network gets reduced to just a signal – and that’s not who we are. By bringing real-time AI directly into our network, we’re delivering more than connectivity – turning conversations into community, starting with Live Translation,” added the CEO. Live Translation was one of a number of advances unveiled during the operator’s Capital Markets Day. 

The operator also published its latest financials. T-Mobile US ended 2025 with 142.2 million customers for all services, up by almost 13 million compared with the end of 2024, and generated service revenues of $71.3bn over the course of last year, up by 7.7%. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the year increased by 6.5% to $33.9bn. The US operator is planning to keep its capital expenditure levels at about $10bn in 2026, roughly the same as in 2025: For further details of T-Mobile US’s full year and fourth-quarter 2025 financials, see this press release. 

Kyivstar has struck an agreement to buy online healthcare platform Tabletki.ua for $160m as it expands its roster of web-based services and diversifies its portfolio. Last year, the Ukrainian telco bought the country’s largest online ride-hailing service, Uklon, for $155m, increasing the revenue of its digital service division from $5.4m to $34.9m, equivalent to 11.9% of its overall income. Veon-owned Kyivstar also already owns a controlling stake in appointment booking service Helsi but it is now adding Tabletki.ua – which enables customers to find, reserve and collect medicine from 14,000 pharmacies nationwide – to its portfolio. Tabletki had monthly reservations of around 14 million last year.

The initial public offering (IPO) plan being hatched by the private equity owners of Dutch operator Odido (formerly T-Mobile Netherlands) has reportedly been shelved (not for the first time) due to a lack of investor interest and concerns about global equity market volatility, according to Reuters. Apax Partners and Warburg Pincus had revived their IPO plans for Odido, which has about 8 million customers for its mobile and fixed services and is joint mobile market leader (along with KPN) with about a 35% market share, at the start of this year. As the joint venture owners have clearly been looking to cash in, it now begs the question of whether they might seek a trade sale to a larger regional telco or digital service provider. 

India’s Bharti Airtel has launched a new AI fraud protection solution to offer protection for customers using one-time-password (OTP) messages. Fraud Alert identifies potentially risky OTPs and warns customers about the potential risk of giving consent for a banking transaction to be delivered while they are still on a call. It comes as fraudsters are looking to exploit the urgency associated with OTPs for day-to-day services, such as delivery or transactions, by duping customers into sharing their information, which could put their accounts at risk. Fraud Alert is already live in Haryana and, according to Airtel, the service will be rolled out to its entire base over the next two weeks.

e& Carrier & Wholesale Services (C&WS), the international wholesale arm of Middle East telco and tech giant e&, says it has “successfully” delivered the Middle East’s first 1.25Gbit/s satellite connection, in partnership with satellite player SES, during a live proof of concept (PoC) at its Jebel Ali Teleport in Dubai. The PoC used SES’s O3b mPOWER Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) constellation, which features narrow beams of approximately 250km in diameter and, according to the partners, delivers round-trip latency of less than 150 milliseconds (ms). “The solution supports a diverse range of strategic applications, including enterprise connectivity, government services, cloud-based solutions and 5G backhauling,” noted e& C&WS in this announcement. 

– The staff, TelecomTV